CBS tries multi-stage syndication for The Good Wife on Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus and TV

CBS CORPORATION ANNOUNCES MULTI-PLATFORM SYNDICATION ROLLOUT FOR "THE GOOD WIFE"

Amazon Prime Instant Video Will Lead the Off-Network Launch With Previous-Season Episodes Available for Streaming March 14

Hulu Plus to Roll Out Previous Seasons of "The Good Wife" in September 2013

Hallmark Channel to Launch the Award-Winning Series on Cable Beginning in January 2014

Weekend Syndication Run Sold to Stations Representing 85% of the Country for September 2014

STUDIO CITY, CALIF. (March 13, 2013) – CBS Corporation announced today a unique multi-platform syndication model for its award-winning drama THE GOOD WIFE, windowing the off-network rights for the series with distribution partners across subscription-video-on-demand services, a basic cable network and broadcast television stations.

"This is an off-network model for a unique serialized show in today's television ecosystem," said Leslie Moonves, President and CEO, CBS Corporation. "It uses creative windowing to serve the content needs of best-in-class partners while realizing the full syndication value for a high-quality series. In addition, the potential for catch-up viewing across multiple platforms can provide incremental value to future broadcasts on the CBS Television Network."

As part of an agreement with Amazon.com, the first three seasons of THE GOOD WIFE will be available on Amazon Prime Instant Video beginning March 14, with season four coming to Prime Instant Video later this year. All Prime Instant Videos are commercial-free and can be viewed at no additional cost by Prime members on Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Fire, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Roku, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and Wii U, among other devices.

"THE GOOD WIFE has consistently been one of the strongest sellers on Amazon Instant Video, so we know our customers love the show. We are excited to be the first to offer seasons one through three of this great CBS series to Prime members and then later this year, Prime members can enjoy season four," said Brad Beale, Director of Digital Video Content Acquisition for Amazon.

As part of an expanded agreement with Hulu, previous seasons of THE GOOD WIFE will be available to Hulu Plus subscribers in September 2013. This builds on previously announced licensing agreements between CBS and Hulu for library content and for CBS- produced programming that airs on The CW. Hulu Plus is available to TV fans on more than 320 million connected tablets, phones, and living room devices for $7.99 per month.

"THE GOOD WIFE is one of the best dramas on network TV and we are thrilled to bring this show – as well as thousands of episodes from 20 other shows in the CBS library – to our Hulu Plus subscribers," said Andy Forssell, Senior Vice President of Content for Hulu. "CBS has been an important partner to us, and we are proud that our agreement continues to create accretive revenue streams for their premium programming."

The Hallmark Channel, a brand long recognized for high-quality entertainment, has acquired the off-network rights to present THE GOOD WIFE, the most decorated broadcast television drama, on basic cable. Since its premiere in 2009, the unique drama, which combines a sophisticated legal franchise with family drama, has earned numerous awards including the AFI Award (2012) and the Peabody Award (2011), as well as Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Awards for lead actress Julianna Margulies. The series has also received numerous WGA nominations for its writing. The Hallmark Channel will begin running THE GOOD WIFE on weekdays beginning January 2014.

"With 80 Emmy Awards and dozens of Golden Globes, Hallmark's contributions to television are unparalleled," said Bill Abbott, President and CEO, Crown Media Family Networks, Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel. "Hallmark Channel's audience is very reflective of CBS's, and as our network enters the arena of creating original, primetime scripted fare, we look to TV programs like THE GOOD WIFE as the type of award-winning, quality series we value and want to emulate," Abbott concluded.

In addition, THE GOOD WIFE will be available to local television stations for a weekend broadcast syndication window beginning in September 2014. CBS Television Distribution has sold these rights to the CBS Television Stations as the flagship broadcast group and to stations of all affiliations, currently covering 85% of the country.

"This is a syndication rollout that's a great match of program with partners," said Scott Koondel, Chief Content Licensing Officer, CBS Corporation. "THE GOOD WIFE episodes have been popular on Amazon's electronic-sell-through (EST) service, and addictive serialized dramas like this perform very well on Hulu Plus. Meanwhile, the Hallmark brand has always been associated with quality and prestige, and THE GOOD WIFE is one of the most honored, critically acclaimed and talked-about shows on television – and, of course, it's a series that has always performed well on the CBS-owned stations."

THE GOOD WIFE, currently in its fourth season, is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Scott Free Productions. Executive producers are Ridley Scott, Robert King, Michelle King, David Zucker, Brooke Kennedy, Ted Humphrey, Keith Eisner and Leonard Dick. Robert King and Michelle King are the creators.

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By: Unknown On 10:31 PM

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Nokia Lumia 520 tries to arrive at FCC incognito, given away by codename

Nokia just tried to hustle a certain RM-914 model through the FCC, but thanks to an earlier glance at the Fed's Indonesian counterpart POSTEL, we know we're actually looking at the Lumia 520. As the Finnish outfit just announced, that model represents the new low-end of its Windows Phone 8 line, though it's decently spec'd with a dual-core 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 4-inch 800 x 480 IPS display and 1,430mAh battery. While eschewing LTE, the device will pack various WCDMA and HSPA+ frequencies for 3G, though in this case, we're not looking at WCDMA 900 / 2100 bands, meaning it's indeed a US model. Its next stop ought to be store shelves later this quarter -- followed by your pocket, if the $183 or so WP8 handset rings your bell.

Source: FCC

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By: Unknown On 4:21 PM

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Pebble smartwatch stops by FCC, tries to prove it's not vaporware

The Pebble smartwatch missed its original September target ship date. Then, it failed to ship in time to stuff stockings this holiday season. And, while we've seen them in person and the company claims a release is imminent, you'd be forgiven for being a bit skeptical. But there is reason to hope: the connected wristwear has officially received a thumbs up from the FCC. What's more, the e-paper timepiece gets the full teardown treatment and comes complete with an owners manual. There's no surprises here, but if you're the impatient type, there should be a few things to keep you occupied until the next delay.

Filed under: Wearables

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Source: FCC

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Engadget tours Gogo's flying test plane, tries its improved ATG-4 in-flight WiFi (hands-on)

Gogo's test plane isn't your typical jet: it seats just nine passengers, and there's no bathroom; just a closet in the back stacked with networking gear. The company, easily the biggest name in in-flight WiFi, uses the aircraft as a flying lab, where it can test everything from throughput speeds to the log-in experience. It's a small plane that flies out of a small airfield, Aurora Municipal Airport in Illinois, and it's normally just Gogo staffers onboard. Today, the company invited a few reporters aboard to test its newest air-to-ground WiFi service, ATG-4. As you can imagine, newer means faster: ATG-4 is rated for max download speeds of 9.8 Mbps, up from 3.1 Mbps with the last-gen service. It also helps that video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and HBO Go are now blocked, which should ensure that no one person abuses his WiFi privileges.

As it happens, ATG-4 is already live on approximately 40 planes run by US Airways, Delta and Virgin America. (United has said it plans to introduce the service on select flights in the first half of 2013.) In theory, then, the best way to test ATG-4's performance might be to slip unnoticed onto a commercial flight, and see what it's like to share bandwidth with 20 other people. What's neat about the Gogo test plane, though, is that it can toggle back and forth between ATG and ATG-4, making it easier to compare performance between the two. What's more, though the test plane seats nine, Gogo is able to simulate a crowded flight, with 20 to 30 passengers attempting to use the internet at once. After 90 minutes of flying over Illinois and Missouri, we've got some first-hand impressions and also some pics, if aviation porn is your cup of tea. Read on for more.

With this generation of its air-to-ground service, Gogo made a switch from EVDO Rev A. to Rev. B. By all accounts, it's been an easy enough transition for the airlines: the company says the upgrade can be performed overnight and indeed, Gogo often goes to the airlines' facilities to handle the retrofitting. As you can see below, part of the process involves stepping up to a bigger antenna, which is fixed to the underbelly of the plane. The equipment on the ground is all backward-compatible, which helps minimize the need for an infrastructure overhaul. Consider that when you wonder why there isn't HSPA+ on the back end. (Gogo also says HSPA+ would be an inefficient use of its modest 3MHz of spectrum, but that's another story.)

Aboard the plane, there's gear for the last-gen ATG service (you'll find that on the upper shelf) along with an ATG-4 configuration sitting below. Fun fact: the company's Itasca, Illinois headquarters contain testing labs that mimic ATG setup you'll find on commercial planes. There's even a room with airplane seats and overhead bins where the company tests the service with focus groups. (We threw in a photo below for giggles. The slide-up windows are a nice touch, though that's more leg room than we're used to.)

So how's the performance with this new setup? It's not fast, per se, but it's faster. Usable, which is a start. Page loading times dropped noticeably, from 10 to 14 seconds on ATG, to as little as four seconds on ATG-4. File transfers were faster on ATG-4, too, though we'd still advise waiting until you get home to your home WiFi network unless it's really urgent that you share that Facebook album right away. On ATG-4, we were able to upload a 4.1MB photo to SkyDrive in a little over four minutes; that same upload took five minutes and 15 seconds using the last-gen technology. Nota bene: both ATG and ATG-4 compress images, so that alone might be an incentive to hold off on any photo uploads.

At first glance, oddly, this difference in performance doesn't really show up in SpeedTest.net results. Sure, the jump from 0.3 Mbps downloads to 0.81 Mbps rates is something, but our upload speeds held fairly steady, fluctuating slightly between 0.2 Mbps and 0.3 Mbps. We also found that that the ping time dropped by almost half when we moved from ATG to ATG-4 (well over 300ms to 188ms) which suggests latency is much better here. In general, we're willing to take benchmarks like these with a small grain of salt, if only because we have no way of knowing how close we are to the nearest cell site. Still, as we said, real-world performance improved noticeably when we switched to the newer technology.

Average SpeedTest results (downloads / uploads)10 to 14 seconds (depending on load)4 to 8 seconds (depending on load)Uploading a 4.1MB file to SkyDrive

And yet, much of this improvement doesn't have so much to do with speed but rather, sheer usability. As we said, ATG was fine -- but that's when we there were only nine people on the plane. In that scenario, page loads sometimes took more than 10 seconds, but they loaded. Saving work in Engadget's CMS took three seconds -- again, a little sluggish, but it's better than nothing. Once the Gogo crew simulated a crowded plane, though, we couldn't even load the Chrome browser settings page. On ATG-4, performance still takes a dip, but at least your workflow won't get interrupted. Even with that simulated load, we were able to load web sites in about eight seconds, which is still faster than on last-gen ATG in the best conditions. Fortunately, Gogo says only seven people sign on during the average flight, though ATG-4 can support up to 65 people. That might be the biggest takeaway here: WiFi on planes still isn't very fast. It's just more reliable now.

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